Victor gave a thumbs-up and switched off his radio.
Gaz hefted his grenade launcher and crouched low as he went through the hatch. Victor shouldered his carbine and followed him.
When Gaz dropped prone to the ground, Victor mimicked him, the move feeling slow in the low gravity. The dome of Lucille’s Bay loomed over the horizon as a great black shadow obscuring the bright green stars in the background. Below the shadow, a pair of dust trails moved toward the crash site.
“Oh, shit,” Victor said to himself.
Gaz walked up and pressed his visor against Victor’s. “Looks like they’re gonna see if we’re dead or not.”
“You don’t think they know we’re alive?” Victor asked.
Gaz shook his head. “They’d send more than two rovers if they were sure.”
“You got a plan then?” asked Victor.
“Yeah, ambush them and take their rovers,” Gaz said.
“A rover won’t get us out of the system,” Victor said.
“No, but maybe it’ll get us to something that can,” Gaz said. “Just follow me and start shootin’ when my ’nades pop.”
Gaz got up and half-bounced, half-crawled down the trench cut by the
Corsair
.
Victor followed, trying to match Gaz’s movements, careful not to use too much force and bounce over the lip of the trench.
After moving ten meters into the trench, Gaz stopped, peeked over the lip, and then dropped back down.
Victor came up beside him and tried to get a look himself, but Gaz put a hand on his shoulder to stop him, wagging a finger in front of his visor like a schoolteacher admonishing a student. He then hefted his grenade launcher, adjusting the knobs on the sides of the weapon’s scope.
Gaz pointed at Victor’s carbine and then shouldered his grenade launcher.
Victor gave a thumbs-up and readied his weapon. His heart raced at the prospect that he was about to enter another firefight.
Gaz rose, aimed his grenade launcher, and fired. Each shot was completely silent in the airless environment.
Victor got up and leveled his carbine. The two rovers were parked just one hundred meters away. Their occupants, four from each rover, moved toward the crash site with short low-gravity hops.
Then Gaz’s grenades landed around them, exploding soundlessly, flashing bright in the light amplifier. Some of the figures launched in short parabolic arcs when the grenades exploded at their feet. Others—just close enough to be within the kill radius—simply dropped. The survivors scattered.
Victor set the fire-selector of his carbine to a five-round burst, aimed at a pirate scrambling away from the rain of grenades, and squeezed the trigger.
The carbine vibrated against Victor’s shoulder, its vacuum-muted retort reverberating inside his helmet. The rounds hit, puncturing the pirate’s helmet and backpack. Little geysers of air spewed from the bullet holes as the pirate dropped slowly to the ground and bounced once before settling in the low gravity.
Victor aimed on another pirate and squeezed the trigger, dropping him as well.
Then geysers of regolith erupted around Victor, and he felt something hit his chest, knocking him into the trench.
I’m hit!
he thought.
Again!
Panic crept in when he thought his suit had been breached. A quick glance at his pressure gauge showed he was not leaking atmosphere. The pile of regolith he’d been using for cover must have slowed the round down enough for his armor to stop it.
Gaz crawled over to Victor while the regolith berm above was ripped apart by a constant stream of bullets. He rapped twice against Victor’s visor.
Victor responded by making a thumbs-up in front of Gaz’s visor.
Gaz helped Victor into a low crouch.
The gunfire above their heads continued, resulting in a dusting of regolith raining down on Victor and Gaz, coating their suits. Whoever was firing must have had a machine gun to keep up that kind of fire.
Gaz ejected the spent magazine from his grenade launcher and loaded another one before leaning to press his visor against Victor’s. “You run down the trench a ways and try to draw the fire of the fucker shooting at us. Do that, and I’ll pop up and waste ’em.”
Victor was not in love with the idea of encouraging other people to shoot at him, but, if his years of service with the Savannan Navy had taught him one thing, it was how to follow orders.
He got up and hopped on the tip of his boots, keeping his head below the lip of the trench. After moving about ten or so meters, he leaned against the side of the trench.
He set his carbine to full-auto and rose over the lip of the trench. Green muzzle flashes blinked like a strobe in the light amplifier from a shallow crater some fifty meters away. Victor aimed at it, squeezing and holding down the trigger.
The carbine buzzed in his helmet, and a dozen puffs of regolith were kicked up around Victor’s target. He kept firing until the carbine’s ammo counter came up 00.
Victor immediately ducked as the return fire punched through the regolith above him.
Ten meters up the trench from him, Gaz stood, aimed his grenade launcher, and fired twice.
A second later, the fire above Victor’s head stopped.
He crawled a couple meters down the trench, loaded a fresh magazine into his carbine, and then stood rose above the lip of the trench.
He didn’t see any gunfire. Just eight motionless figures and a pair of empty rovers.
“Cormac, we’re clear. Carry Fara out. We just got ourselves some wheels,” Gaz said over the radio. “And hurry, before more fuckin’ pirates show up.”
There had been more than enough time for the pirates to radio for help. No point in maintaining radio silence.
“Hey you, Victor. Keep a lookout while I grab one of the rovers,” Gaz said.
Victor nodded and leveled his carbine against the side of the trench, keeping an eye out while Gaz hop-sprinted to the nearest rover and climbed in.
Moments later, Gaz drove the rover over to the
Corsair
’s wreck, pulling up just short of the trench behind it.
By that time, Cormac came out, carrying Fara. The low gravity apparently made the task of holding her quite easy for the rail-thin starchild.
“Load ’er in the back, Cormac,” Gaz said.
“Gently please,” Fara said.
“Of course,” Cormac said. He walked over and carefully placed Fara in the right side of the backseat and strapped her in. He then sat down in the seat next to her. Sitting upright, the top of Cormac’s helmet rose above the rover’s roller cage.
Victor sat down in the left passenger seat. Before he even had time to look for the restraints, Gaz backed up the rover. Victor put out a hand against the dash to keep his visor from smacking against it. Then he was almost thrown from his seat as Gaz put the rover into a sharp backward turn, parking the rover parallel to the
Corsair
’s wreck.
Gaz then hit the gas, and Victor was thrown back into his seat.
“Ah, shit! Careful, Gaz! You’re not helping my leg!” Fara said.
“If you hit an incline too fast, you could send us into a parabolic flight,” Cormac said.
“Yeah, yeah. I know how to drive in low-g,” Gaz said. “How about you fucks give me some radio silence while I find a place to hide?”
The rover was going dangerously fast, but Gaz swerved the rover around every bump that looked like it could launch them into a suborbital flight.
The hard turns threw everyone in the rover from side to side. Victor held on to the bars of the roll cage with a death grip as the wild movements threatened to throw him from the vehicle.
At least with the radio silence, he wouldn’t hear the grunts of pain from Fara every time the rover turned.
After what seemed like hours, Gaz stopped swerving and slowed down as the rover approached a small hill.
When the rover climbed over the edge, they found the hill was actually the lip of a small crater. Gaz drove down the side of the crater and stopped at the bottom.
For a moment, Victor sat quietly in his seat; the sound of his breathing the only thing he could hear.
Then Cormac said, “This crater is deep enough that our short-range radios won’t carry from it.”
“What about satellites?” asked Gaz.
“We didn’t detect any on the way down. And, if there were, I suspect they’d be pointed at space, not at the surface,” Cormac said.
Gaz grunted in the radio. “Fair enough.”
“So what do we—ah, ooh…” Fara took a couple deep breaths. “I’m okay. My leg just didn’t like Gaz’s driving. So what do we do now?”
“Well,” Victor said, “we could sit here and wait for the help that the general consensus says is not coming. Or we try to break into Lucille’s Bay and steal a ship.”
“And who’s gonna fly it?” asked Gaz. “Our pilot has a broken leg and is full of painkillers.”
“I can fly,” Victor said.
“You? Thought you were just a boarding specialist,” Gaz said.
“I was hired to be a boarding specialist, but I do have some pilot training. If we get a ship, I can fly it,” Victor said.
“That seems to be the most prudent course of action,” Cormac said. “In any case, I cannot set Fara’s leg while she’s in her suit. We need to get inside a pressurized environment.”
“So how will we get into the base? Drive up and knock on the first airlock hatch we find?” asked Gaz.
“The rover throws up too much dust. Chances are we’d be spotted,” Cormac said. “We will need to walk.”
“Ah, shit. Do we have to?” asked Fara.
“The surface gravity of this world is only one-sixth of a standard g. It will be easy enough for one or more of us to carry you all the way there,” Cormac said.
“Okay,” Victor said, “but that still doesn’t explain how we can open the airlock.”
“If their security is lax, I can hack an airlock to get us inside without being detected,” Cormac said.
“But you’re not sure,” Victor said.
“No, not until I know what their airlock arrangements are like,” Cormac said.
“All right,” Victor said. “So the plan is we walk to the dome without being spotted, hack an airlock without being detected, and then steal a ship without being gunned down in the process. How does that sound?”
“Sounds crazy, but I don’t see a better way to get off this rock,” Gaz said.
“Sure,” Fara said. “Why not? At least if I get shot to death, I won’t have to worry about my broken leg anymore.”
“Given our options, this seems to be our best chance of survival,” Cormac said.
Victor nodded, though he knew no one would see it through his polarized visor. “Okay. Then that’s what we’ll do. But first we should strip the rover of anything useful.”
Searching the rover, they found a couple spare assault rifles on a gun rack in the back. Victor test fired the rifle by firing a burst into the side of the crater to see if it would work. It did. He gave Cormac his carbine and hung the assault rifle over his shoulder.
Gaz took the other assault rifle, letting his grenade launcher hang from its sling.
Ammo was also stored on the rover. Victor shared the ammo evenly with Gaz.
Finally all four of them topped off their suits from the rover’s supply of air, water, and power. Victor helped Cormac with carrying Fara while Gaz walked ahead toward the dome of Lucille’s Bay.
Chapter 10
After about four hours of cautious low-gravity hopping, the foursome arrived at the edge of Lucille’s Bay’s dome.
Despite the low gravity and Cormac’s help, Victor’s chest burned from the exertion of carrying Fara—made all the harder by the fact their route had taken them in and out of several craters in an effort to keep them out of the line of sight of any guards or patrols or radar.
Once they stopped, Victor set Fara down on a rock. Looking over her head, he saw the trail of footprints they had left in the regolith. It wouldn’t be very hard for any patrol to follow those. Victor and the crew needed to get inside quickly.
Up ahead, Gaz waved to get their attention. So close to the base, they couldn’t risk using their suit radios.
Victor pointed at Fara, gave a thumbs-up, a thumbs-down, and then a thumbs-up again, hoping she would understand the question he mimed.
She did, giving her own thumbs-up.
Victor bounced over to Gaz, who pointed at what looked like the outer door of an airlock.
Victor turned to summon Cormac, only to see the starchild already coming. Bouncing to the door, he probed at it with his long, delicate fingers.
After a few minutes, Cormac turned to Victor and beckoned him over with a flourish of his long index finger.
Victor bounced beside him, and Cormac pointed to the cutlass on his back.